Georgia’s “Safe Carry Protection Act of 2014,” becomes law on July 1, 2014, and was signed by Gov. Nathan Deal on Wednesday, April 24. The law expands the right to carry to schools, churches, bars and airports.
While it will take years to reverse the extreme laws sailing through the Georgia General Assembly, it took only a few hours on Wednesday to demonstrate the absurdity the new Georgia gun law. On the same day that the bill was signed, a man with a gun visible in the waistband of his pants terrorized children and their parents in a Forsyth County park. Police received 22 calls to 911. All to no avail. The children hid. The soccer games were called off. He was doing nothing illegal.
Ironically, Forsyth is one of the reddest of Georgia’s 159 counties. Mitt Romney defeated Barack Obama 80-18 in the November 2012 general election. The County’s population is 2.5 percent black. Those old enough will recall that Forsyth drew Oprah Winfrey to town for a race relations Town Hall meeting after the Klan marched there. Yet, when parents are confronted with a real world experience of Tea Party/ALEC/GOP extremism, they reach out for help. Next time, they should not call 911. After all, Guns Everywhere is the law in Georgia. Instead, call the Governor, or the state legislature.
–Janice Mathis, Esq. is the vice president of the Citizenship Education Fund, a charitable research and education organization based in Chicago.
